While most eyes were focused on a thrilling late-race battle to win Sunday’s Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix presented by WillScot, Louis Foster couldn’t help watching Nashville Superspeedway’s video board in Turn 1.
Specifically, the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver wanted to see how PREMA Racing’s Robert Shwartzman was faring.
The two NTT INDYCAR SERIES rookies were locked in a fierce fight for the Rookie of the Year Award throughout the season. Foster entered the finale with an eight-point advantage, but that margin evaporated on Lap 83 when he was penalized for contact that sent David Malukas’ second-place No. 4 Clarience Technologies Chevrolet hard into the outside wall.
After serving the penalty, Foster was two laps down to the lead group in the No. 45 Desnuda Tequila Honda. When the final restart came with 11 laps remaining, he trailed Shwartzman by two points. Foster thought his chance at the first-year award was lost.
“I mean, yes, bluntly, yes,” Foster said. “I knew that we had an uphill battle.
“I knew we had the car to be able to hold off people, but we didn’t have the car to overtake people. So, being put in that position is very difficult. I think we just kind of held on to faith and just did what we could do, and that’s all we could really do. Just kept it out of the wall, kept it on track, kept it clean. I think, generally, you can’t control (anything else).”
On the final restart, Shwartzman was in the 10th position, Foster in 20th. But like Foster earlier in the race, Shwartzman was penalized for a block on Santino Ferrucci amid the late-race stampede. The drive-through pit road penalty dropped the driver of the No. 83 PREMA Racing Chevrolet to 14th place, a swing of four points that handed the rookie award to Foster.
Foster (photo above, right) finished with 213 points, Shwartzman 211.
“I could see the TV screen in (Turn) 1, so I was watching every lap see where he was at,” Foster said of Shwartzman. “When I saw the laps winding down and he was fighting on the lead lap, there was nothing I could do. I just had to hope he made a mistake.”
Shwartzman offered no immediate comment aside from visibly showing he disagreed with the penalty call.
The two-point final spread was the closest for the rookie battle since this point system was instituted in the 1990s. In 1995, Gil de Ferran edged Christian Fittipaldi by two points. In recent years, Felix Rosenqvist beat Colton Herta for the 2019 award by five points, and there were six-point spreads between James Hinchcliffe and JR Hildebrand in 2011, Hideki Mutoh and Justin Wilson in 2008, and Airton Dare and Jeret Schroeder in 2000.
Had Foster and Shwartzman finished this season with the same number of points, Shwartzman would have received the award based on having the higher race finishing position (ninth in last month’s second race at Iowa Speedway). Foster’s best finish was 11th on two occasions.
Both drivers earned an NTT P1 Award for being the fastest qualifier for a race. Shwartzman was the pole winner for the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge while Foster took the top spot in the XPEL Grand Prix at Road America.
Foster became RLL’s second Rookie of the Year in the past four seasons, following Christian Lundgaard in 2022.
“From a year standpoint, obviously it’s great to wrap up Rookie of the Year,” Foster said. “We knew we had a shot this weekend.
“I was in a decent position and then I got my (penalty), which really hindered us a lot. It ruined our day. But I think overall, it was a good year.”
